“Yes.”

“What age are you?”

“I think I am thirteen.”

He looked long at her, vindictively she thought, but he was only picturing the probable future of a painted lady’s child, and he said mournfully to himself, “Ay, it does not even end here; and that’s the crowning pity of it.”  But Grizel only heard him say, “Poor thing!” and she bridled immediately.

“I won’t let you pity me,” she cried.

“You dour brat!” he retorted.  “But you need not think you are to have everything your own way still.  I must get some Monypenny woman to take you till the funeral is over, and after that—­”

“I won’t go,” said Grizel, determinedly, “I shall stay with mamma till she is buried.”

He was not accustomed to contradiction, and he stamped his foot.  “You shall do as you are told,” he said.

“I won’t!” replied Grizel, and she also stamped her foot.

“Very well, then, you thrawn tid, but at any rate I’ll send in a woman to sleep with you.”

“I want no one.  Do you think I am afraid?”

“I think you will be afraid when you wake up in the darkness, and find yourself alone with—­with it.”

“I sha’n’t, I shall remember at once that she is to be buried nicely in the cemetery, and that will make me happy.”

“You unnatural—­”

“Besides, I sha’n’t sleep, I have something to do.”

His curiosity again got the better of the doctor.  “What can you have to do at such a time?” he demanded, and her reply surprised him: 

“I am to make a dress.”

“You!”

“I have made them before now,” she said indignantly.

“But at such a time!”

“It is a black dress,” she cried, “I don’t have one, I am to make it out of mamma’s.”

He said nothing for some time, then “When did you think of this?”

“I thought of it weeks ago, I bought crape at the corner shop to be ready, and—­”

She thought he was looking at her in horror, and stopped abruptly.  “I don’t care what you think,” she said.

“What I do think,” he retorted, taking up his hat, “is, that you are a most exasperating lassie.  If I bide here another minute I believe you’ll get round me.”

“I don’t want to get round you.”

“Then what makes you say such things?  I question if I’ll get an hour’s sleep to-night for thinking of you!”

“I don’t want you to think of me!”

He groaned.  “What could an untidy, hardened old single man like me do with you in his house?” he said.  “Oh, you little limmer, to put such a thought into my head.”

“I never did!” she exclaimed, indignantly.

“It began, I do believe it began,” he sighed, “the first time I saw you easying Ballingall’s pillows.”

“What began?”

“You brat, you wilful brat, don’t pretend ignorance.  You set a trap to catch me, and—­”

“Oh!” cried Grizel, and she opened the door quickly.  “Go away, you horrid man,” she said.